560. Quarantelli, E.L. and Denis Wegner. "A Voice from the Thirteenth Century: The Characteristics and Conditions for the Emergence of a Ouija Board Cult." Urban Life and Culture 1 (4), 1973: 379-400.
Description of the formation of a micro "cult" of college women interested in Ouija. While there had been some interest in this game among the group for a few months, the "cult" formed itself rather suddenly when one of the seancers asked for a "sign," and some rather ordinary anomalous events occurred at that moment. This seemed to convince the women that there was something "to" the Ouija board, and they immediately formed into a closed clique with regular roles and procedure for consulting the board. When more anomalies failed to occur, interest eventually waned and the clique split up.
From this example the authors conclude tentatively that a cult is "a diffuse group exhibiting inward innovative behavior that both differentiates and makes for conformity among its members and which is supported by an ideology" (pp. 387-388). Inward innovative behavior refers to behavior that is novel relative to the group, whose members continue to fill ordinary, extra-cult roles (hence "diffuse"); their behavior is deviant with regard to the context in which the group occurs, but conformist in terms of the group itself. Doctrine provides both a rationale for the group and a claim to legitimacy, a pretence to its superiority to the rest of the world. The anomalous events created a sort of crisis which precipitated the cult; the "sign" seemed to contradict the ordinary reality assumptions of the participants.
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